The use of wireless communication devices, such as wireless telephones and other devices, has become particular prevalent in today's society. In some instances individuals often forego traditional wired phone service, and rely totally on their wireless mobile devices for communication.
Determining the location of a wireless device, and the location of a specific user, has also become very important in the overall communication scheme. Utilizing smart phone devices, users have access to wide variety of location-based services. Such services can provide navigation, advertising, location features, and other features associated with the specific location of a user, as determined through their mobile device. Often, such features are provided through the use of the Global Positioning Service (GPS) technology of the device. The GPS functionality provides the location of a device and its user. However, such features may also be provided by the interface of the mobile device with multiple base transceiver stations (BTS) if a GPS functionality is not available.
Such location services are particularly important, when they are related to emergency 911 services in the United States and Canada, or 112 services in the European Union. Such services need to be implemented when the users or mobile devices are not in the coverage area of a GPS signal, or the GPS functionality is not available. In such cases, mobile device communications with one or more BTS's is relied upon.
However, if a person is inside of a building, or in an enclosed area, such as a tunnel, stadium, shadowed area of a mountain, underground train, train coach, ship, or other structure, where direct signal access to the necessary BTS's is not available, wireless communications often have to be facilitated through signal repeating systems, such as distributed antenna systems (DAS). Distributed antenna systems generally utilize one or more master units that interface with one or more signal sources, such as base transceiver stations (BTS's) signal sources, such as base transceiver stations. Each master unit is then coupled, through a signal transport and distribution network, to a plurality of remote antenna units that are located in various physical locations around a building, tunnel, train, ship, or other structure that the mobile device users may inhabit. The mobile device is interfaced with the distributed antenna system through the various remote units, and ultimately communicates to a necessary BTS. With the increasing use of mobile devices, more emergency cells are initiated from mobile devices and location of users in extended coverage areas becomes more important. However, for the purposes of mobile device and user location, such distributed antenna systems often are not equipped to provide such location information to a BTS, because the BTS has no visibility with respect to the user's distribution or location within the coverage area that is served by one or more remote units of a distributed antenna system. Accordingly, existing solutions used in indoor or sheltered environments are insufficient to provide the needed location information data for extended coverage areas.
Furthermore, with existing distributed antenna systems not providing an indication of the location for various users within the coverage area, the BTS does not know how to optimally allocate the resources, including signal time and frequency resources, for specific remote units within the larger overall mesh of remote units that make up a distributed antenna system within a building or other space. Systems for addressing the needs in the prior art are provided by U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,400,292 and 8,638,214, which are parent patents to this current Application.
Accordingly, it is desirable to further provide the position of a user within a distributed antenna system coverage area that is provided at the level of the remote units in order to provide an accurate indication of the location the user, as well as to provide the overall system with information for being able to optimally allocate the resources of the system.